Got a minute? In a humdinger of a press conference... president admires his administration’s efficiency and precision… and everything else today in US politics. By Tom McCarthy

Trump: I’m running a ‘fine-tuned machine’

1 Trump’s theory of everything

In a vaudevillian, digressive, confident, disoriented, 77-minute news conference Thursday, Donald Trump touted his work as president, denied ties to Russia, attacked the media, claimed to be popular and obsessed over Hillary Clinton.

God only knows what I’d be without you. Photograph: Carlos Barria/Reuters

The Swiss watch presidency

I turn on the TV, open the newspapers and I see stories of chaos, chaos. Yet it is the exact opposite. This administration is running like a fine-tuned machine, despite the fact that I can’t get my cabinet approved.

– Donald Trump

2 ‘Russia is fake news’

Trump branded reports that his presidential campaign had contacts with Russia before the election as “fake news”. He said he had “inherited a mess” and blamed the chaos set off by his travel ban on “a bad court”. “I’m not ranting and raving,” he said.

Nuclear holocaust bad

We’re a very powerful nuclear country and so are they. I have been briefed. And I can tell you one thing about a briefing that we’re allowed to say because anybody that ever read the most basic book can say it: nuclear holocaust would be like no other.

– Donald Trump

4 Another Flynn story

Trump said he fired former national security adviser Michael Flynn because Flynn had communicated poorly with the vice-president. But Trump said he didn’t mind Flynn discussing sanctions with Russia and said he would have approved.

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